A Camera Has the Eye of a Poet
Videos tell a story, capture interest and create a world within themselves. In my classroom, I strive to take students OUT of their textbooks and to create authentic/interactive experiences supported through technology. Teaching English Language Arts and maintaining this philosophy can be a challenge.
Most recently, my objective was to support student understanding of the sequence and flow to stories as well as to assist them with their ability to recall these sequences. To do this I used the following video clip about the events that take place between a wolf and a pig. It was created using stop motion animation and has no narrative or dialog.
http://youtu.be/rmkLlVzUBn4
Students were asked to do the following:
#1. Watch the video about the wolf and the pig
#2. While watching, complete 8 sentence strips about events that take place in the video.
#3. Re-watch the video
#4. Exchange sentence strips with a partner and have them re-order them
Because the video is unique, my students gladly watched (and re-watched) the video. It was also quite memorable and the quality of work on the sentence strips was good. I also noted that the dialog between students during the exchange was very beneficial and they worked cooperatively to accomplish the task.
One OTHER benefit of this activity was the fact that there is NO narrative in the video. This worked wonderfully in my classroom as I had multiple stations taking place in the room and the music instead of dialog kept the room quieter and made it easier for the groups to watch the video.
Please see this google doc for other inspirational videos and lesson ideas:
